I had an interesting talk with one of the neighbors grandsons. He is American and visits his German grandparents every summer for a week or so. He is maybe 13 years old. He kept asking about our adopted kids. He kept asking half educated questions like "what's that movie star that also adopts like a million kids"?, I said "Do you mean Angelina Jolie"?, He said "yes". Then he said she adopted the most ugly dying child from Ethiopia and made her beautiful (like Angelina Jolie is a miracle worker, and the child wasn't already beautiful). I personally think Ethiopians are very beautiful! He kept saying they almost adopted a North Korean child, but that's not possible. It's OK, I kept trying to set his facts straight. His dad is a vice president of a major soft ware company. He said they wanted to adopt but it cost too much. I told him about the tax credit for international adoption. He complained about the cost of cloths. Then he goes on to tell me about all the cool places he has traveled (South America, Africa, India). I guess International adoption might be too expensive for a software vice presidents families...especially if their children need to travel the globe observing the poor like they were pitiful creatures in some kind of zoo. Perhaps with all his exposure to the world, he will at some point realize these are human beings he is talking about, not trendy projects. Thomas and Philip were riding their scooters on the street outside his grandparents house. He seemed almost afraid to talk with them. They are just kids. They didn't have the same beginning as our birth children. They were abandoned because of poverty, but they are just kids. And now they are our kids...and we didn't "make them beautiful", they always were beautiful.